


Fragments

by AR_Chase



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/F, Flashbacks, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-War, Veela Mates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:28:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26643013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AR_Chase/pseuds/AR_Chase
Summary: Hermione isn't sure where it all went wrong.Fleur has an idea.
Relationships: Fleur Delacour/Hermione Granger
Comments: 48
Kudos: 298





	1. Wine

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! Just a few quick notes before you read. 
> 
> I wanted to keep the foundation of this work as similar to cannon as possible. With that idea in mind, there are going to be scenes and portions of dialogue paraphrased or taken explicitly from books 4-7. It should go without saying, but these scenes, portions of dialogue, and characters belong exclusively to J.K. Rowling. 
> 
> Thoughts and criticisms are more than welcome! 
> 
> A.R. Chase

Hermione isn’t sure where it all went wrong. 

She has suspicions, of course. It’s only in her nature to spread everything out in her mind, picking apart the pieces of her life and turning them over until she finds the answer. Some moments are sharper than others (silvery blond hair between her fingers, lilac and honeysuckle, the indescribable urge to leave her husband at the altar). These pieces hurt her so badly that she recoils and packs them all away. They sit in the dark, dusting in the recesses of her mind before she gets desperate and pulls them out again. 

Maybe, she figures, she’s always been this way. 

She never felt particularly drawn to romance. Or, perhaps, romance was never particularly drawn to her. Even as a girl, Hermione much preferred books to boys. There were times she felt flickers of something — Gilderoy Lockhart’s award-winning smile, Victor Krum, bashful and kind, asking her to the Yule Ball. But those nascent embers never lasted. Instead they cooled and turned to forgettable bits of ash, loose and shifting on the wind. 

Her marriage was no exception. Sure, she cares for Ron, but she doesn’t love him. They married because they were supposed to. It was expected of them. Ron and Hermione, always squabbling, always snapping at each other. They’ll end up together in the end, they all thought. They all _expected_. And, to their credit, they were right. She was the one who kissed him first, she said yes to his proposal, she said her vows in front of all their friends and family. But she doesn’t love him. She doesn’t love him the way they write about in stories or sing of in songs. There’s no spark, no passion, no adoration, and there never was. 

She doesn’t love him the way he loves her. And now she pays the price. 

(How could she? How could she love him when there is a fire that rages in her, smoldering hot in the pit of her stomach. A fire that has burned since she was 14 years old, consuming her from the inside out. Oh, it burns, so lovely and sweet —) 

Too sharp. Hermione drops the wine bottle on the floor and it shatters into a million tiny little pieces. The sound makes her jump. Wine splashes across the tile and stains the kitchen walls with flecks of red. She could whisk it all away with a wave of her hand, a flick of her wand. There’s the Muggle way, even — a broom in the hallway closet, some cleaning supplies too. Instead she stands there, unmoving on her path to the counter, staring at her reflection in the dark, gleaming pool.

She wonders if this is the state of her marriage now. A broken thing (her fault) she could fix but can’t (or won’t) for some inexplicable, elusive reason (she has suspicions). Ron left in the rain with his things hurriedly packed, and slammed the door so hard behind him that Hermione felt the tremor in her bones. They’d fought before — loads of times — but never like this. Never so visceral, never so vitriolic. 

She’d finally said it. The tip of the iceberg. It wasn’t her fault, though. He just kept _pressing_. They’d been married for two years, dating for longer, and the next obvious step together was children, Ron insisted. The recent arrival of little James only made things worse. For months now he’s been asking — gently at first, but he quickly grew irritated with her list of evasive responses (What about her career? Maybe they should save a little more first. Were they really ready for a child?). They argued about it endlessly, constantly yelling in circles until Ron gave up for the night and glowered from his side of the bed. The couch, sometimes, if Hermione deemed his words particularly offensive. 

Tonight had been no different. 

“Don’t you want our children to grow up with Harry’s?” Ron fumed at dinner, fist clenched hard around his fork. She had just told him that they should continue to wait. For what, she couldn’t say. Her plethora of excuses had dried up. They went back and forth over their plates, food untouched, and Ron became more irate with each traded blow. His words started to sting, and hers began to bruise, “I mean, honestly, ‘Mione, do you even want to have kids with me?” 

“Of course I do,” She said hotly, but the passion in her voice was from anger and irritation, not from a genuine conviction. The realization made her guilty, and her gaze faltered. It was only a moment. A split second view of what was really going on inside. But it was enough, enough for Ron to drop his utensils and lurch out of his chair. It made a terrible noise as it screeched against the floor. 

Hermione was never a very good liar.

“Be honest with me, damn it!” He roared, his face having gone as red as his hair. His chest heaved with every ragged breath and his mouth twisted up into a nasty scowl. She flinched and he softened, reigning in what anger he could. A moment passed. The clock above the mantelpiece clicked dully in their silence. His shoulders slumped. He was wearing thin, nearing the end of his rope. Hermione could tell. His voice was more sad then, still angry, but more melancholy, “Just...just be honest with me. Why can’t we try?”

After years of bottling it up, part of the truth came tumbling from her lips in a blurted, instantly regrettable admission, 

“I hate when you touch me.” 

There it was. Out in the open, the bottle uncorked. There was more to say, more to admit under the dim light from the chandelier (a laugh that sounded like bells singing on the wind, that night in the dark under thousands of twinkling stars) but the mere thought of it was far, far too sharp. She desperately wanted to snatch her words from the air and box them back up. Ron gaped at her with wide eyes and an open mouth, so shocked that he couldn’t make a sound. 

It’s true. She hates the way his hands feel on her skin. They’re too wet, too clammy. Too large and oafish in their wanderings, too tight around her waist. She hates the way he presses against her at night, suffocating her, trapping her. His lips feel like poison when they touch her, and the few moments a week that he spends inside of her are soulless and empty. Afterward she lies awake, curled up tight into a ball as he snores beside her. She feels dirty. Disgusting. She cries then, silent as to not wake him, and wonders where it all went wrong. 

Ron regained his ability to speak at one point, but she can’t recall a word he said. She just remembers seeing his mouth move (Were those tears on his cheeks? She can’t stand to meet his eyes). He talked at her for a long time, pleading question after question, and all she could do was stare catatonically, going over those pieces in her mind (a frilly blue skirt, the way her skin glowed in the moonlight). Ron went upstairs then, dinner forgotten, and flew out into the stormy night with a trunk rolling behind him. 

She didn’t try to stop him. He looked over his shoulder once as he passed her, looking for some opposition, maybe, but she offered none. 

(Maybe, if she loved him, she would have).

It took a while for her to move. She just sat there at the table, the clock ticking amicably by, and listened to time crawl forward. Reality felt stretched somehow, elongated. Endless. She felt like she was melting, dissolving, burning (from the inside out). For the first time in her life, Hermione didn’t know what to do. What to think. Where to even _begin_. There were no books for her to crack open and investigate, no shadowy danger looming over her shoulder, no perilous mysteries that needed solving. 

There were no friends or family she could turn to, either. Her parents were out of the question. They worry far too much. There was Harry, her brother, a man she trusted with her life on more than one occasion, but he was Ron’s brother, too. She couldn’t put him between them like that. It would kill him. And then there was Ginny, her closest friend, but she would sooner side with Ron than Hermione. Blood is thicker than water after all, and Hermione doesn’t blame her. 

No, it was just her, Hermione Jean Granger-Weasley, and those pieces of her life that hurt the most.

### 

“It’s _French_ ,” Hermione said, years ago in the Great Hall, just after the arrival of the competing schools. Ron stared warily at the large dish of shellfish stew, “I had it on holiday this summer. It’s very nice.” 

Her summer in France almost felt like a lifetime ago. It was before the Burrow, before the harrowing events at the Quidditch World Cup. It was nice to get away and relax, if only for a little while. She was due for a vacation after dealing with Sirius, time turners, and werewolf professors. The streets of Dijon seemed to be lifted straight from a postcard — so grand and gorgeous, so rich with history. Her parents kept her particularly close after the incident with the basilisk, but Hermione didn’t mind. She liked being near them again. Together they visited museums, sampled authentic French cuisine, and took enough pictures to fill an entire scrapbook. The memories brought a smile to her lips.

Ron looked skeptical still, regarding the offending dish with suspicion. He shrugged before reaching for the black pudding instead, “I’ll take your word for it.” 

Hermione rolled her eyes and Harry laughed. For a boy so enamored with food, Ron was annoyingly picky. The boys settled into conversation — mostly excited chatter about Victor Krum — and Hermione effectively tuned them out. She didn’t care much for Quidditch. Besides, there was something else about her trip to France, something that she never told anyone. Something that plagued her always, something that — 

“Excuse me, are you wanting ze bouillabaisse?”

There she was, that French girl from summer. Standing before them in Beauxbatons blue. Hermione wondered for a moment if she was in a dream. She looked older somehow, more filled out, and still devastatingly, terrifyingly beautiful. Hermione’s breath caught in her throat and she hoped with everything she had that she didn’t look like Ron, who was purple in the face and slightly gurgling. As embarrassing as his display was, Hermione couldn’t really blame him. The Beauxbatons girl — God, why didn’t she ever ask for her name — looked like she stepped right from a painting in the Louvre. 

Harry said something to her then — what, Hermione couldn’t say — and slid the dish towards her. 

“You ‘ave finished wiz it?” Her accent was still strong. She spoke to Harry, but looked right at Hermione. _Into_ her, more like. Her eyes were a deep shade of cerulean, one that Hermione saw in hazy, disembodied dreams, and she knew then that the Beauxbatons girl recognized her too. An unreadable expression shifted across her face — surprise, perhaps, or amusement. Excitement, maybe. It’s gone before Hermione can get a better look. 

That...that _pull_ , for lack of a better word, was still there. Like she was the center of gravity and Hermione wanted nothing more than to cling to her. Should she say hello? She clenched her fists under the table, suddenly feeling very sick, and refused to meet her eyes again. 

“Yeah,” Ron stammered, “Yeah, it was excellent.” 

She left back to the Ravenclaw table then, bouillabaisse in hand, and Hermione watched her silvery-blond hair sway around her hips. Her mouth went dry and she swallowed harshly. 

“She’s a _veela_!” Ron gasped out. Hermione scowled. 

“Of course she isn’t. I don’t see anyone else gaping at her like an idiot!” 

This wasn’t true. Not at all. Nearly all of the boys’ heads turned to watch her as she glided gracefully by. Hermione herself gaped at her like an idiot. She drew inward, fighting the urge to gaze longingly at the Ravenclaw table, and busied herself with staring at her plate. She could feel Harry looking at her, but he said nothing. The boys thankfully left her alone after that, even when she didn’t touch a single dessert when they arrived. 

Yes, there was something else about her trip to France. Something that plagued her always, something that she never told anyone about. 

(She saw her that summer, only in passing. The French girl. Her voice sounded like bells in the wind. She didn’t know she was a witch then. She didn’t think she’d ever see her again. Her legs were long and slender, porcelain under the clear Dijon skies, and her lips were full and her eyes were dark, entrancing blue. She was like a magnet walking by, drawing stares from all around, and Hermione craved her in a way that frightened her. She made Hermione feel something, something she’d never felt before. Something Gilderoy Lockhart’s award-winning smile couldn’t even _compare_ to. Something boundless and primal and inescapable. How many times did she come to her in dreams, how many times did she wake up in the night warm and sweating with the sheets bunched around her waist? How many times did she think of those eyes, how many times did she touch herself to them —)

Hermione’s face burned with embarrassment. With shame. She didn’t speak much for the rest of the feast. Afterward she crawled back to the girl’s dormitory, lips pursed in thought. Crookshanks was there waiting for her. He stared at her, his yellow eyes wide and intelligent, and brushed against her legs with a comforting purr. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown chirped back and forth about the cute boys from Durmstrang. They seemed to like Victor Krum more than Ron and Harry did. Hermione ignored them and drew the curtains around her four-poster, settling into an uneasy rest. She wondered then if everyone knew her secret. Did she carry it on her skin? Could they see her guilt, her shame, or did it fester in the dark? A sinking feeling settled in her gut, and she rolled over on her side to hug her knees close to her chest. 

That night, she dreamt of silver-blond hair and perfectly straight, very white teeth. 

### 

It was late when she snapped out of her reverie. The sun had long since sunk below the horizon, and the storm outside had only gotten worse. Heavy bolts of rain struck harshly against the windows and a frigid wind howled through the trees. A flash of lightning illuminated the dining room with a pale, ghostly glow before thunder growled from the distance. Her legs had fallen asleep under the table. How long had she been there? Minutes? Hours? She stood, hands trembling at her sides, and began to clear the table. 

So here she is. Hermione Jean Granger-Weasley, the Golden Girl, the brightest witch of her age. Hermione Jean Granger-Weasley and the wine seeping into her socks. Hermione Jean Granger-Weasley and her shitty life and her broken, loveless marriage and that terrifying, elusive moment where everything turned sideways. How comical. How fucking depressing. 

Then, like a woman gone mad, she wrenches open the kitchen cupboards and throws every last glass to the floor. 

Teacups, wine glasses, mugs, the tumblers her parents bought them as a wedding gift (she throws these ones extra hard). An empty seat at the ceremony. A kiss pressed below her ear, on her throat, between her thighs. Lilac and honeysuckle, silver-blond hair between her fingers. One by one they slam against the tile with a solid, deathly crunch, and spray jagged bits of glass across the floor of their small kitchen. Some pieces dig into the soles of her feet as she moves. It stings, but she doesn’t stop. 

Hermione doesn’t know why she does it. She just _does_ until there’s nothing left to destroy. 

(“I love you,” She said that night under the stars. It was peaceful there, in the fields around the Burrow. The tallgrass swayed calmly in the breeze, and the sky above was clear and bright. It didn’t feel at all like the world as they knew it was under attack, like darkness was encroaching from every direction. It didn’t feel at all like she could die tomorrow. But Hermione knew better, “I’ve loved you since I was 14. Show me, before it’s too late —”).

Somebody screams. An anguished, sorrowful scream that reverberates through the whole house. A cry so desolate, so inhuman that Hermione thinks for a moment that some poor animal must be dying. It takes her a moment to realize that the sound belongs to nobody but herself. 

Her throat goes hoarse. She braces against the wall, a wave of exhaustion settling in her bones, and she cries in a way that she’s never cried before. It’s a tremulous, full-body despair that pours from her very soul. The walls of her own house begin to close. Surrounding her, choking her, killing her. She can’t breathe here anymore. She can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe —

And then, with the sound of a small, faint pop, Hermione Jean Granger-Weasley disappears.


	2. Tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the support on the last chapter! I wasn't sure how much interest there would be around this fic, but I was more than pleased with the results!
> 
> It should be noted that in this fic, Fleur and Bill never dated or married. I won't say too much about the exact nature of their relationship, as I prefer to show rather than tell. Some of you will also notice that I changed the canon year Hermione went to France with her family in the last chapter. I bumped the trip up by a year for this fic — a small change, but one I thought to note. 
> 
> Warning for sexually suggestive themes towards then end. If it's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip!
> 
> Last but not least, comments and criticisms are more than welcome!

Fleur doesn’t sleep much anymore. 

The cottage was lonely even before Bill left. But at least then she had his laughter, his warmth. The narrow halls have since grown cold in his absence. Shell Cottage is too quiet now, too empty. Sometimes the air is so still and silent that Fleur thinks she can hear the house breathe. A faint, laboured shuddering sound — old and weary, hollow like bone. She lies awake most nights, listening to the lofty whisper of the waves beyond her window, the cottage breathing all around her, and shivers until the sun rises. 

Sometimes she grows restless in her own skin and walks barefoot along the shoreline. The tide tumbles forth to meet her, cool and gentle against her legs, and seafoam pearls around her footprints in the sand. She walks and walks and walks until she reaches the far end of the beach. There’s a spot on the ridge that Bill showed her once. It’s a rocky climb, one that leaves her feet sore and aching, but the result is well worth it. She can see miles and miles into the flat expanse of ocean, high above the rolling hills of sand. Shell Cottage looks terribly small from up here. A single blotch down below, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. 

The view is spectacular. But it isn’t what she comes up here to see. 

There’s a lighthouse in the distance, far across the bay. So far that the top of the rocky cliff is her only chance at seeing it. A single, isolated column of white and red reaching high into the night sky. It’s shrouded by a thick cover of fog more often than not. But she can still see the intermittent light calling to her, guiding her to shore. There’s a pulse to it. A rhythm. It’s comforting to her — that distant light on the horizon. She feels a little less alone then, and sits there on the ridge until the sky begins to lighten from black to purple to brilliant gold. 

Fleur writes into the early hours of the morning. To Bill, to Gabrielle. She writes about mundane things, like how her seedlings are doing in the planter beds, or her prospective job offer from the British Ministry. The idea of becoming a referee between them and the Veela clans under their jurisdiction sounds like a righteous headache, but what else is she to do? She’s not quite curse-breaker material anymore with her perpetually-shot nerves. The job was fun, once — exhilarating — but she’s too old for that now. Too spread thin.

(Sometimes, Fleur writes letters to her. Longing letters one night, then scathing ones the next. Letters that make her weep, letters that make her skin prickle with heat. Either way, she always burns them after). 

Other nights, when nothing seems to soothe her and the silence in her head becomes far too loud, she curls up on Bill’s old armchair in the parlor and reads. Anything, really. Old letters, poetry, magazines. The Daily Prophet. The Quibbler. She even read _Hogwarts, A History_. Twice. 

It’s these nights that she misses him the most. Bill, her greatest and truest friend. He writes to her often, but it isn’t the same. He always knew what to say when she found herself in such a state. There are few people who could ever even begin to understand her special brand of suffering, and Bill is one of them. He sat up with her when she couldn’t rest. They would play Wizard’s Chess (though Fleur proved to be rubbish at it no matter how much she tried) or they would talk and talk about nothing until she nodded off to sleep. Or, sometimes, they would simply sit in each other's company. It was comforting to have him near.

He needed her too, in his own way. She tended to him after Greyback. After his brother died. When he confessed to her that they were one and the same. She saw him at his worst, knew how to calm him when the nightmares came. They were partners in agony, partners in solitude. 

Yes, it’s these nights, when the silence is most deafening, when she misses him the most. 

“Oh, Fleur,” Bill had said to her months ago in the parlor of Shell Cottage. His belongings stood patiently by the door, all packed away in a charmed trunk. A playful yet somber smile tugged at the corner of his lips. His single earring swished from side to side as he shook his head, the fang glittering in the light, “What the hell happened to us?”

It was a rhetorical question, of course. A running gag. They both knew what happened. _Life_ happened, that terrible game of chance, and they had both been on the losing end. Fleur laughed, but the sound wasn’t happy. 

He hugged her then, pulling her close enough to feel his heartbeat in his chest. She breathed him in — leather, cologne — and hoped that she’d see him again soon. Her eyes stung with unshed tears and she gripped him as hard as she could. She knew he would stay if she asked. It would only take a few words. Then he would live with her forever in their lonely little prison. The selfish part of her wanted him to put all his clothes back in his closet. The selfish part wanted him to put his trunk back under his bed. The selfish part of her didn’t want to ever let him go. 

But how could she keep him? How could she trap him in this gilded cage with her when he had a chance to fly? 

He’d asked her a million times to go with him. To pack up everything they owned and go far, far away from Cornwall. Far away from everything. They could escape from this place.They could be anyone. They could go anywhere. They could start _fresh_. They could leave their suffering behind. 

(He asked her one night why she had to stay. Why she couldn’t leave. “You know why,” She said, and he left it at that). 

“You’ll take care of yourself?” His voice was rough with emotion. They were kindred spirits after all. The brother she never had. Her companion in pain, her protector from despair. It was just as hard for him to leave, but he had to. They both knew it. He had a chance, a real _chance_. 

She nodded against his neck, but she knew it wasn’t enough to fool him.

Then he left for better, greater things, and it was just her alone with the sea. 

The book in her lap is a temporary respite. Tonight her poison of choice is _Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches_. Unsurprisingly, the thing is pure drivel. Bill bought it for her as a joke last Christmas. A family tradition, he said. Maybe it’d give her a few pointers. It was funny, then, because she didn’t think she’d ever be in the most unfortunate position of being bored enough to actually read it. But, here she is. Fleur supposes she ought to thank him for the gift after all. It’s a good laugh, if nothing else. 

She’s on the sixth fail-safe way to charm a witch — wand work isn’t everything, apparently, and compliments are an important skill to master — when there’s a knock at the front door. 

Her heart seizes in her chest. Who could it be? It’s early in the morning. Too early for visitors. The sun has yet to wake. A cold dread washes over her. Bill didn’t forget anything. He would have written her if he was coming back. Gabrielle was away at Beauxbatons, completing her final years before graduation. Her parents wouldn’t have made the journey to Cornwall. They hate Britain and its dreary, overcast skies. Who could it be if not death knocking at her door? She grips her wand tightly in a trembling hand as she edges down the hallway, a mental list of offensive spells at the ready. Expelliarmus. Petrificus Totalus. Stupefy. 

The war left its mark on all of them, and hers burns white hot with fear. Fleur grits her teeth and opens the door. 

Only it isn’t death calling on her in the night. 

(Or, maybe it is).

“Hermione?” 

Hermione. Hermione. _Hermione_. Standing there on her porch in wrinkled house-clothes and blood-stained socks. She lowers her wand. No Ron, no Harry. Just Hermione. Fleur can scarcely believe it. It’s been years since she had seen her last (two, to be exact, on the day of the wedding). Could it be a trick of her mind, perhaps? A sleep-addled delusion? Fleur blinks once, then twice, but nothing changes. It takes her a moment to remember how to speak again.

“Is everything all right?” 

“I didn’t…” Hermione starts, her teeth chattering in the cold. She wraps her arms around her middle. She’s thinner than Fleur remembers, more lost, more unsure, “I didn’t know where else to go.”

* * *

“You look like you’re going to be sick.” Bill whispered to her, looking dapper as ever in his dress robes. They were seated in the orchards around the Burrow, underneath a large, sprawling marquee. Fleur saw many whom she recognized — most notably being Harry Potter in a Muggle suit, standing supportively behind a green-faced Ron Weasley at the altar. Neville, Dean, and Seamus were there as well, with George Weasley being the eldest groomsmen among them. Bill was supposed to join them. But he declined his brother’s offer, citing a supreme discomfort at being front and center for the gathered crowd. His scars, he said, they would all look at his scars. 

(Fleur knew the real reason). 

“Because I _am_ going to be sick.” She hissed back. Bill had the decency to purse his lips in apology. It was at his insistence that she even came at all. Fleur wasn’t a masochist. She had no desire to be there. The invitation, written in Hermione’s diligent script (she would recognize it anywhere) went promptly in the bin after it arrived. It was no use, though. More for sentiment than anything else. Bill was expected to go. He _wanted_ to go — it was his youngest brother’s wedding. 

It would draw too much attention if he attended alone, Bill reasoned. Fleur knew he was right. They all suspected the pair to be a couple (wrongly, of course, but the assumption went largely without correction) and her absence at the Weasley family table as his date would be too noticeable. So she curled her hair and did her makeup and tried her best _not_ to look like she wanted to melt into the floor. 

She had her years to grieve. But it still felt like her heart was being ripped out of her chest. 

“Where is she?” Arthur wondered aloud, fiddling with the small Muggle clock around his wrist. Fleur didn’t understand him and his peculiar fascinations, “She should be out by now, no?”

Ron and his groomsmen had assembled some time ago. But Hermione and her bridesmaids had yet to make their grand appearance, for whatever reason. The apprehension made her stomach turn.

“I’m going to use the restroom,” She said to Bill as she stood from her seat, leaving no room for discussion. Several heads turned to watch her, much to her annoyance. Her thrall always found a way to exert itself at the most inopportune of times. Molly Weasley fixed her with an icy stare as she weaved her way through the packed marquee. She never cared much for Fleur. She thought her to be a floozy. A leech feeding on Bill’s kind heart, a thief pilfering through his hard-earned wealth. It bothered her at first, being the subject of that piercing, judgmental gaze. 

But, conditioned after years of scrutiny, she didn’t care much for Molly Weasley’s opinion. 

The Burrow was just how she remembered it. Some things were different (a face missing from the clock near the fireplace), but Fleur still knew her way around. She had stayed there, only a handful of summers ago, for a different wedding. She was just a girl then. Fresh from school, barely starting her life. But her innocence was already fading. Stolen by the war, tainted by death. Killed by heartbreak. From loss. How many people from that celebration were now missing from today? She felt very tired then, moving through the house where her life fell apart, and she wanted nothing more than to sleep for a long, long time. 

The thought weighed on her shoulders as she climbed up the stairs. 

“Hermione? Love, it’s Ginny. Just let me in, we can talk about this…” The youngest Weasley (now Potter) was pressed close to the door of the restroom when Fleur rounded the corner. As the matron of honor, her dress was slightly different than the others — Luna Scamander, Parvati Patil, and three others that Fleur didn’t recognize (members of Hermione’s family, most likely) — who all stared at the shut door with wide, nervous eyes. 

All except for Luna. She looked as serene as ever, greeting Fleur with a placid smile. 

“Hello, Fleur,” Luna hummed. Ginny glanced up at her then. She looked very much like her mother in that moment, regarding Fleur with thinly-veiled contempt. 

“‘Come on hun, open the door.” Ginny tried coercing Hermione again, desperation coloring her voice. She scowled at Fleur when the handle still didn’t budge. Like this was somehow her fault. Fleur wondered how much she knew. 

“Hello,” Fleur said, suddenly feeling very embarrassed. These damn Weasleys. Always treating her like a repulsive, hateful thing. What was it that Ginny called her when her back was turned? She’d have to ask Bill later. But whatever she had walked in on, it was clear from Ginny’s demeanor that she wasn’t welcome to stick around. “My apologies, I was only looking to use the restroom. I’ll…head back downstairs now.” 

“Wait,” Luna stepped forward, “Maybe Hermione will talk to you, Fleur. You two were the best of friends once, weren’t you?” 

Fleur almost winced. That was putting it mildly. Very, very mildly. 

“I don’t know, Luna,” Ginny warned from her spot by the door. She didn’t even bother to speak to her directly. For once Fleur was grateful for the younger woman’s suspicions, “Hermione is...fragile right now.” 

So this was the delay. Cold feet. (“You Gryffindor lions, all roar wiz no bite! You are a _coward_!”). How very much like Hermione. 

“Yes. Hermione’s head is full of Wrackspurts.” Luna nodded sagely. The three dark-haired girls wrinkled their brows in confusion. Either they weren’t used to Luna’s musings, or they were Muggles unaware of the more fantastical parts of Hermione’s life. Fleur decided that both possibilities were equally plausible, “She won’t talk to us, but maybe she’ll talk to you. It’s worth a try.” 

No, Fleur was not a masochist. She didn’t feel the need for self-punishment. Nor was she a bumbling idiot. No, she knew her place in life better than most. Fleur knew that this would very well destroy her from the inside out. She _knew_ that she owed Hermione nothing but cold indifference. But how could she protest? A refusal would draw too much suspicion. She could practically hear Bill’s voice in her head. 

_Damn you, Bill_ , she thought as she squeezed past his begrudging sister, avoiding contact with her scathing glare before settling close to the door, _Damn you_. 

Her heart thrummed wildly in her ears. It had been months since they’d seen each other last. Months since they had spoken, months since she’d touched her skin. That meeting didn’t go well at all — not that they usually did. But this one left a particularly bitter taste in Fleur’s mouth. She had been so angry. So hurt. Hermione was exceptionally cruel when she wanted to be. Fleur wasn’t a saint either, she knew that, but the wounds still stung. 

Even so, she missed her. Craved her. 

(Maybe she was a masochist after all).

“Hermione? It’s Fleur.” The words came out before she had a proper moment to choose them. She steeled herself, breathing calmly through her nose, “Can I come in?”

Silence. Nobody moved. Fleur tried again. A moment passed, and still nothing. Fleur didn’t know why, but a strange disappointment settled in her chest. Perhaps, maybe, she had hoped that Hermione would open the door. Perhaps she had hoped that there was still something to be salvaged. Something to be saved. That they still had a chance, that she wasn’t going to die an old, lonely hag by the sea. But what did she expect? She’d been standing on the other side of the closed door her whole life, waiting for Hermione to open it. 

(Yes. She was a masochistic, self-punishing, bumbling idiot). 

She turned to Luna, an apologetic (and slightly disheartened) forfeit already forming on her lips when, to her great surprise, the lock released with an audible click. 

Ginny was positively fuming. A violent array of emotions shifted over her face — anger, confusion, doubt. Envy. Such a jealous creature. The display almost made Fleur laugh, and she would have if she didn’t fear being hexed. 

“Suppose we’ll leave you to it, then.” She muttered darkly, finally addressing her directly (as accusatory as her tone was), and turned on her heel. The other bridesmaids followed her swift descent down the stairs. 

“Be careful, Fleur,” Luna said before she left, “Wrackspurts make your brain go fuzzy.” 

Fleur held her breath. Then she opened the door. 

* * *

A sharp whistle from the tea kettle makes her jump.

Fleur never quite understood the English fascination with the drink. Even after residing in Britain for several years, she still had yet to acquire a proper taste for it. Bill tried relentlessly to find something to her liking. For months the pantry was crammed full of tea — everything from black to green to floral. But there were too many options to choose from, all with confusing names, and she much preferred coffee, anyway. 

Tonight she pours herself a cup all the same. 

“I hope Earl Grey is all right,” She says as she walks back into the sitting room, half-expecting the whole thing to have been a dream. But Hermione is just where she left her on the sofa, looking leagues more lucid than before. The other woman was in a complete daze when she arrived that short time ago. She was so confused and unfocused that she was entirely unable to answer any of Fleur’s frantic questions. After ensuring that she wasn’t hurt, Fleur ushered her to the parlor, igniting a fire in the hearth with a wave of her wand, and wrapped a blanket around her trembling shoulders.

(She _had_ been able to answer one question — “Can I get you anything?” — the English and their fucking tea). 

It’s surreal to see her in the flesh. Fleur can’t help but feel a longing pain in her heart. 

“Earl Grey is lovely, thank you.” Their hands brush briefly when Fleur hands her a cup. Her skin hums with warmth and she fights the urge to snatch her hand away. Hermione looks up at her, her eyes so dark and vast that Fleur fears getting lost in them, and her Veela blood _surges_. Her resolve — that perilous house of cards — trembles at the force. Fleur clears her throat before escaping to Bill’s armchair on the opposite side of the room. 

She would have to keep _that_ in check. 

They sit in silence for a little while after that. Hermione drinks her tea and looks around the room. Fleur wonders if it looks different than she remembers it. Bill took some of his more personal items — some family photos, trinkets, a few books. Did Shell Cottage look as empty as it felt? Something on the coffee table grabs Hermione’s rapt attention. Fleur realizes too late what it is. To her embarrassment, _Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches_ stares up at the ceiling, forgotten in Fleur’s haste to the door. 

Damn you, Bill. 

“Hermione, I have to ask. What happened t —” 

“Bill’s not around?” Hermione interjects before she can finish. Fleur blinks in surprise. A strange helplessness burns across the other woman’s face. _Leave it alone_ , her eyes seem to say, _please_.

“No,” She says slowly, studying the way Hermione digs her nails into her palm with one hand and grips her tea with the other. Fleur can play this game if Hermione needs her to. What else did she have to do tonight, anyway, “He moved out some time ago. He’s living in Brazil now.”

“Your husband never told you?” The word tastes like ash in her mouth. She can’t stand to use his name, so it’ll have to suffice. 

“He didn’t.” Hermione shook her head, “We haven’t really talked much, as of late.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” She lies. The Veela in her preens with satisfaction. 

“I always thought you two were…” 

“An item? You and the rest of the Weasley’s.” Fleur laughs, a genuine one at that. Imaging herself with Bill is humorous in more ways than one, “But no. Bill and I are just close friends. He’s enamored with some tall, dark-haired Brazilian beauty anyhow.” 

Sérgio. A Brazillian wizard whom Bill met on his travels. He’s quite taken with him, judging by his letters. So much so that he got a position working with the Brazilian Ministry. His family doesn’t know the... _particulars_ of his situation, save for Fleur. They know only that he needed a change of scenery, a new direction in life. Molly despised the fact that he left Shell Cottage to Fleur for the time being. More than once she tried to talk him out of it, urging him to stay in Cornwall or, if he really needed to leave, to entrust the cottage to family. But Bill chose to let Fleur stay for as long as she pleased, and now Molly Weasley hates her more than ever. 

They play that game for what feels like hours. They talk about ordinary things — the weather, Hermione’s work with the house elves, the newest addition to the Potter family. Hermione asks about Gabrielle, even, much to Fleur’s delight. It feels nice. Soothing, like she’s just come home after a long day. 

“I missed you.” Hermione breathes out. There’s a certain sadness to her voice, then. A certain guilt. There’s something else, too. Something carnal. Desperate. Fleur knows that gaze better than anything else. Her eyes bore into her from across the room — those dark, intelligent, swirling pools of chocolate. She looks beautiful like this, cast in the flickering orange glow of firelight. The most beautiful woman Fleur has ever seen. Her blood sears in her veins. 

“Did you?” Fleur says and shifts in her seat. She can’t look away. 

“Yes,” Hermione whispers, her tone soft and tremulous. She licks her lips, “I’ve missed you so much.”

She rises from her spot on the sofa. Fleur can’t move. She’s trapped there in the armchair, pinned by some supernatural force. Entranced. Hermione steps closer and closer — slowly, carefully, her empty mug forgotten on the coffee table. She doesn’t stop until they’re just breaths apart. Fleur can feel her heat as she stands above her, swallowing her, consuming her. Her head swims and her vision narrows. A hand brushes against her cheek. 

“Hermione,” She warns. Her control is slipping, her resolve crumbling by the second. The hand slips lower, down her face, ghosting over her throat. Her pulse. Her heart, her chest, her soul — 

The house of cards quivers, then it falls. 

They crash into each other. Lips, teeth, tongue. Somehow they tumble their way to the bedroom, clothes strewn in every direction. The line between Fleur and the Veela begins to blur. Her skin is on fire, set ablaze with every press of Hermione’s open mouth. She’s frantic with her touch, hurried and quick like she might never get the chance again. Hermione grips her hard enough to bruise. 

She can feel her everywhere. Her breasts, her hips, just below her navel. Blunt nails raking down her back, teeth scraping along her neck. Lips pressed against the apex of her thighs. Fingers crooked inside. Push, pull, like the rhythm of the tide. They climb together, up and up to that sacred, gilded peak, and Fleur unravels piece by piece until she comes undone. There’s an explosion of color behind her eyes as her muscles pull taut, a scream bubbling from her lips. She can feel it — ancient magic in the air, a kind she’s never felt before, crackling with frenetic energy. 

Hermione comes with a strangled sob. Like something deep inside of her is hurting. 

They settle beside each other after, skin slick with sweat. And then, with heavy, jelly-like limbs, Fleur Delacour sleeps peacefully for the first time in years. 


	3. Flower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter! Thank you all so much for the comments and support! 
> 
> I made the stylistic decision to change how Fleur's accent is written in canon. I find that using J.K. Rowling's method of conveying Fleur's accent makes the dialogue slightly jarring and hard to read, so I changed her manner of speaking just slightly. 
> 
> As always, thoughts and criticisms are more than welcome!

" _Stunningly pretty? Her_?” Pansy Parkinson barked as they passed by, that infernal article clutched in her hand, “What was she judging against — a chipmunk?”

Hermoine’s life had taken a sharp turn for the worst after the Halloween Feast. Her lofty hopes for a normal school year were dashed the moment Harry’s name flew out of the Goblet of Fire, replaced with the pressing, paramount need to keep her best friend alive. If that wasn’t already enough to deal with, Ron and Harry just _had_ to get into a spat. They absolutely _refused_ to speak to one another. No meals together, no trips to Hogsmeade, no walks around the grounds. That left her playing messenger between them, and she was quite sick of it. Between that, helping Harry with summoning charms, and somehow staying on top of her own coursework, Hermione had little time to think about anything else. Then Rita Skeeter’s blasted article came out and made everything worse. 

(Then there was her. The French girl. Hermione’s breath caught in her throat when she was chosen as the Beauxbatons champion. There was something about the way her skirt shifted around her legs, something about how she looked right at Hermione when she glided by in the Great Hall. It made her feel like her skin was on fire. Like she was suffocating and would never breathe again. Like she was drowning and incinerating all at once. Fleur Delacour. That was her name. She almost missed it over the sound of her own heart. Later she would mouth that word over and over in the safety of her four-poster, tasting it, memorizing the way it felt on her lips. It felt like a curse-word, almost, some sacrilegious thing to be ashamed of but still felt so good to say. Flower, flower, flower). 

“Ignore it,” Hermione cautioned, trying her hardest to remain as dignified as possible. Harry’s face twisted up in anger, his mouth already opening to defend her. The Slytherin girls laughed and laughed until they rounded the corner, out of sight, “Just ignore it, Harry.” 

She knew it was easier said than done. The article made things difficult for her, too — she couldn’t go anywhere without the stares and the remarks — but she did her best to keep up a brave front for Harry. He was suffering enough under the stress of the Triwizard Tournament and from Ron’s jealous fit. Then there was the attack at the Quidditch World Cup to worry about. No, Harry had plenty to deal with. She wouldn’t have him fretting over her too. 

The library wasn’t the place of respite she had hoped it to be, not anymore. It was crawling with people more often than not — namely the groups of giggling girls spying on Victor Krum through the bookshelves. He was always there. Hermione didn’t know if he was studying or looking for an edge in the competition, but his constant presence (though he didn’t bother her directly) was getting on her nerves. She didn’t understand the fascination with him. He was tall and athletic, but there was nothing about him that made her swoon. 

(Fleur came to the library often, too, and a crowd of belligerent, drooling boys followed her every single time. She never paid them any mind. Fleur was cold in that way, regarding the boys that gawked at her much like she would a bug under her shoe. Madam Pince chased them out whenever their disastrous attempts at catching her attention got too loud. It was exceedingly annoying, but Hermione understood _that_ fascination. Fleur was so beautiful that it was almost painful to look at her. Like staring at the sun shining in the sky. Hermione didn’t let herself do it often. She would force herself to look anywhere else, even when every bone in her body howled for her). 

“They only like him because he’s famous!” She muttered as they took their seats, already armed with several tomes on summoning theory. Victor Krum sat in his usual spot a few paces away from them, his devoted fan club already on the prowl, “They wouldn’t look twice at him if he couldn’t do that Wonky-Faint thing —”

“Wronski Feint,” Harry corrected, becoming particularly glum, then. 

Harry had developed some sort of block when it came to summoning charms. He was stuck, somehow, unable to concentrate no matter how hard he tried. She could tell when his attention would wander. His eyes would become softer, more unfocused, and his gaze would stray away from the page to stare at nothing in particular. Hermione tried. She really did. But something was plaguing him (it wasn’t hard to understand why, considering the fact that his life was at stake and all of Hogwarts seemed to hate him) and there was nothing she could do except try again and again and again. 

She wouldn’t let him face this alone. She wouldn’t.

“I think we’re done for the day, ‘Mione,” He said after a few fruitless hours, an exhausted sigh blowing through his lips, “This isn’t going anywhere.” 

“Because you have to _focus_ , Harry,” She chided, but didn’t press him further. Forcing him to continue would only serve as a waste of time. He had resigned himself for the day, convinced that he wasn’t going to understand. If there was one thing Hermione knew about Harry, it was that his resolve was stronger than that of anyone she knew — even if it was at his own detriment. She waited patiently as he gathered his things, “But all right. We’ll try again tomorrow.” 

“You’re not coming?” 

“No, you can go on without me,” Hermione shook her head, “I’m going to stay and finish up some work.”

In all honesty, she was already caught up with her coursework. She was several lessons ahead, in fact. But she wanted to be alone. Just for a little while. She was never alone now — not when she had to split her time between her feuding friends. Hermione loved them dearly, but Ron and Harry’s quarreling taxed her greatly. And there was never any _quiet_. Her mind had been so loud — so terribly, excruciatingly loud — and all she wanted to do was lose herself in a book. It was easy for her to dissolve when she read. Easy to become so wholly and completely enraptured in what she was doing that nothing else existed except the words on the page. She could pretend for a moment that the world froze on its axis and that nothing else mattered. 

But it didn’t work. 

Not this time. Her mind still raced and nothing was quiet or still. Hermione didn’t want to think about her, but she did anyway. She felt like Harry, sitting there with an open book, unable to comprehend a thing. Only she knew what her block was. Fleur Delacour. She haunted her. The memory of her eyes — that deep, dark blue — loomed over all that she did. Hermione thought about her hair often, too. She wondered if it felt as soft as it looked. And her lips, so lovely and full. Her voice, though she only heard it a few times in passing (complaining about the castle or the weather or the food or anything, really), came filtering through her dreams. 

The dreams. She’d had them before, ever since summer, but they had only gotten worse since the Halloween Feast. They were less disembodied. More corporeal, more vivid. The nights in which she woke in a fevered sweat only grew in frequency. Hermione knew how to make it go away, knew how to give herself what she craved. But she swore to herself that she would never do it again. So she’d lie awake in agony, then, her skin burning and aching for a touch she had never known, and fight temptation till morning. 

The thought of Fleur never left her alone. It was frustrating. It was _wrong_. 

(She knew what it meant. Hermione was anything but stupid. She knew the truth. But she didn’t like what the truth meant. She hated it. Thinking about _it_ felt like handling glass, so sharp that the jagged edges cut into her very soul. So she put it away. Far away in a place reserved for only the deepest, most painful things. She didn’t know it then, but that terrible, biting truth would stay in the dark for a long, long time). 

“Excuse me, may I sit?”

_That_ sent her thoughts to a crashing halt. Fleur Delacour stood in front of her, as if summoned by her musings for a second time, and offered her a small, polite smile. Hermione didn’t know how she never noticed her entry. Almost every single eye was trained on her — from the dopey, glazed looks from the group of boys at a corner table to the envious, green-eyed gaze of the girls peeking at Victor Krum between the bookshelves. 

That pull was still there, that magnetism that made Hermione want to reach for her and never let go. Hermione felt like a fish out of water. Like she was floundering, drowning on land. Her hands felt very sweaty all of a sudden and her throat went awfully dry. Fleur stared at her expectantly until she could remember how to string words together. 

“Sure,” She sputtered out. Not the most eloquent or refined, but it was all she could come up with. 

Fleur was excruciatingly beautiful in the pale light from the windows. Her hair — that curtain of silver-blond — moved perfectly around her as she sat across from Hermione. Beauxbatons blue brought out the color of her eyes, and the lines of her face seemed to be shaped from marble. Hermione wanted to trace them with her fingers. The bridge of her nose, her cheekbones, her temple, her jaw. Hermione wanted to memorize them all. 

“I remember you from France. In Dijon.” 

“Yes,” Hermione croaked. Is this what Ron felt like all the time? Maybe she’d have to cut him some slack. She cleared her throat before attempting to continue, “I was there this summer with my parents. I remember you, too.” 

(The understatement of the fucking century. She more than remembered her — she dreamt about her, fantasized about her. She did terrible things to herself while her parents slept soundly down the hall. Sometimes, after she was finished, when her thoughts wandered and her self-control had yet to return from its shameful absence, she wondered what her handwriting looked like. Was it neat? Was it perfect, swooping cursive? Why did she want to know?). 

“I am Fleur,” She smiled, with teeth, this time. They were very, very straight and perfectly white, “Fleur Delacour.” 

( _I know your name_ , that part of her in the dark wanted to say, _I’ve said it a thousand times_ ). 

“Hermione Granger. A pleasure to formally meet you.” 

“‘Ermione,” Fleur repeated, slowly, trying it out on her tongue. She laughed bashfully at her attempt, ducking her head, “I am sorry for my English. It is very poor.”

“No, don’t apologize,” Hermione rushed out. She liked the way her name sounded on Fleur’s lips. She wanted to hear it again and again, “I think your English is brilliant. Trust me, you don’t want to hear my French.” 

“Ah, you are too kind, ‘Ermione. You are ’ere often, non? In ze library.” 

Something inside of her steeled. Did she come here to belittle her? To tease her like the rest of her classmates? Of course she had. Pansy Parkinson must have put her up to this, knowing that every eye in the library would be fixated on whatever was about to come next. What could it be? Her study habits, her hair? Perhaps her face or her teeth (though Madam Pomfrey shrunk them to a more palatable size). It would be the grandest humiliation of all time — the loveliest girl in school come to torture Hermione Granger. A true Slytherin magnum opus. 

(Did everyone know what she was? Could they hear those thoughts in her head? Did they know what she felt — )

“I suppose so.” She snapped coldly, drawing inward and preparing herself for an insult or cruel joke. They were flung at her relentlessly thanks to bloody Rita Skeeter. A strange anxiety brewed in her gut — an excruciating, tortuous, nervous fear that had plagued her for weeks. 

“I see you ‘ere a lot, always reading. With ze Potter boy. You are both very studious.” Fleur said instead, much to her surprise. No jest, no half-witted quip or biting injury. She just sat there with that same polite, diplomatic smile. If she noticed Hermione’s sudden shift in mood, she pretended not to. 

Hermione laughed, then, after processing that she _wasn’t_ the unassuming victim of some Slytherin prank (that her secret wasn’t out). Harry was many great things, but studious was not one of them, “I wouldn’t call him that.” 

“‘Arry Potter, ‘e is your boyfriend, non?” Her tone was light. Conversational. Innocent. Curious. But there was a certain depth in that cerulean gaze. Something that wasn’t at all casual. Something deep and penetrating that made Hermione itch all over. She was searching, looking for something. Hunting. Or was that her mind playing tricks on her? 

“No, he isn’t,” Hermione swallowed, “Don’t believe anything from that article. It’s absolute rubbish.” 

“I’m single, anyways,” She added, her voice softer than before. It was meant to be something negligible, a harmless afterthought tacked on for the sake of it. But it didn’t come out that way at all. It was pointed, embarrassingly so, and Hermione wondered for a moment if she’d made a fool of herself. 

Only Fleur seemed...pleased. There was a shift that crossed over her face, a glimmer of satisfaction and excitement, and then it was gone. It was so quick that Hermione scarcely believed it was there at all. But it was, she knew it in her gut, and the knowledge made her squirm. 

“No boyfriend?” Fleur mused, “But you are so pretty!”

(What was this game they were playing? This precarious back and forth?). 

Hermione went scarlet. She couldn’t think of a single time she’d ever been called anything _remotely_ close to pretty. She’d never even referred to herself in that way. 

“Thank you,” She said rather shyly, “You’re...very pretty, too.”

They sat there and talked for what seemed like forever and a moment all at once. Like they had entered their own special, timeless void. They were alone soon enough. Victor Krum left before them, his loyal fans close on his heels, and even Fleur’s dazed admirers gave up loitering eventually. The sun sank slowly below the Black Lake, bathing the world in a warm amber glow, and gave way to a darkening sky peppered with the tremulous beginnings of nascent stars. Rolling clouds of amaranth pink drifted calmly in the distance and an autumnal breeze came shuddering from the North. The Forbidden Forest stood as a sentinel to it all, a stoic and unmoving guardian along the shoreline. 

Hermione learned trivial things, a collection of facts that meant everything and nothing. She learned that Fleur lived in Cassis (not Dijon, she was only visiting family on that summer day), that her favorite color was lavender and that she was very, very good at charms but rubbish with potions. Fleur liked to read — almost as much as Hermione — and she had somewhat of a green-thumb. She had a sister named Gabrielle and far preferred warm weather over cold. That was what Fleur missed the most about France — its clear blue skies and the feeling of the sun against her skin. She missed the waters of Cassis and the sight of the family vineyards beyond her window, the smell of roses from the garden. 

Hermione didn’t know why, but those small things seemed more important than anything else she’d ever heard in her life. 

Later, after Madam Pince had shooed them from the library at the closing hour, and Fleur had walked her up and up the shifting staircases to the Gryffindor Tower, Hermione stared up at her in the dim, flickering light from the braziers. Fleur looked ethereal in the trembling shadow. Like she was a goddess lowered down to earth, an otherworldly spirit. Hermione felt loose, somehow, untethered from reality as if she was in a dream, and hoped that she’d never wake up. 

“Thank you for walking me all the way up here.” Hermione whispered in the dark. Something burned between them, some blazing conflagration that ate up all the air and made her head swim, “I really liked talking to you today.” 

(She more than liked it. It filled some need in her that she didn’t know existed and left her hungry and aching for more. She licked her lips. Her skin was flush and hot all over. They were close in the dark, so close that Hermione could count the faint collection of freckles that dusted across the bridge of Fleur’s nose. She could smell her hair — lilac and honeysuckle. Was that the sound of her heart or some ancient, pounding drum in her chest?)

“Goodnight, ‘Ermione,” Fleur said before pressing a kiss that was too long to be chaste but too short to be forward against her cheek. It burned so lovely and sweet, “I ‘ope we speak again soon.”

That night as she crawled into bed with the curtains drawn, she traced a finger along the same spot over and over again. It was warm there. Like the press of Fleur’s mouth never faded. Hermione pulled the covers up to her chest and wondered what it would have felt like if only she had turned her head. If their lips had caught, if she had given into that all-consuming fire. The thought was too electrifying to feel guilty, too right to feel wrong. 

(But it was, wasn’t it? Perhaps that could wait till morning). 

She stilled for a moment, listening to the soft sounds of breathing in the room. They were all sleeping, she was sure of it. She bit her lip in contemplation. Hermione knew that she would regret it later. That come first light her gut would roil in disgust and that she’d scrub her skin raw. She would look at herself in the mirror and want so desperately to be somebody else, to uproot this sick, shameful weed in her soul. But that was then and this was now. She’d do it just this once. 

Flower, flower, flower. 

* * *

Hermione wakes with a start. 

The last wispy tendrils of her dreams promptly begin to fade. She’s naked, completely so, and a pleasant soreness pulses between her legs. The ocean stirs beyond the open window and the sky outside is a cloudless, pristine blue. It’s noon, almost, judging by the height and permeating heat of the sun. A cool breeze drifts through the curtains. Gulls cry sharply from overhead and Hermione stretches, listening to the sound. She can’t remember the last time she’d felt nearly as rested. The sheets are smooth and soft against her flesh, and the body beside her is solid and warm. 

“Ronald, wake up,” She mumbles, reaching a hand to shake him awake, “We overslept.” 

Only it isn’t her husband she finds. 

Hermione lurches up in bed, her eyes blown wide, and looks frantically about the room. How could she have been so _stupid_. Memories of the previous night come filtering in all at once — her fight with Ron, apparating to Shell Cottage. Fleur’s hand pressed against her, the ragged breaths along the shell of her ear. Warmth wrapped around her fingers, sweetness on her tongue. That hungry, empty part of her being completely, entirely, utterly filled. Coming so hard that she thought that she would surely die. She recoils at the recollection, visibility cringing as if struck by some insurmountable force, and throws the comforter aside. 

(No, no, no. What has she done — )

“Hermione?” Fleur rouses as she bustles about the bedroom. She sits up, drawing the sheets to cover her breasts, and rubs her eyes with the back of her hand, “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Hermione snaps. Her underwear lies in a crumpled heap by the nightstand. She pulls her panties up and clasps her bra with quick, trembling hands. Where are the rest of her clothes? She feels terribly sick. Like she’s going to vomit at any second.

“Just slow down,” Fleur says, her voice still rough from sleep. Hermione can’t stand to look at her, “We should talk about this.”

“We don’t have to talk about _anything_.” All of that control, all of that penance. Her carefully constructed charade. The meticulous facade. All of it, gone in an instant. She’s crying, she can feel the tears slipping into her mouth. They taste bitter. Acrid. Poisonous. She finds her jeans by the door and slips into them, “This was a mistake.”

(How many times has she said that before? At the Black Lake. Within the dusty, forlorn walls of Grimmauld Place. At Hogwarts, next, the air thick with the stench of death and piss and blood. Even in this very bedroom just months before her wedding. Nearly half of her life was spent making the same, destructive mistake. Spent being a broken record. How pathetic). 

(Too sharp. Put it away, away, away — )

“Hermione, stop!” Fleur calls as she tears from the room, but she doesn’t listen. She snatches her shirt off the floor in the hallway and shrugs it over her shoulders. Shell Cottage looks different in the light, somehow — more empty, more hollow and bone-like. She never quite realized how bare the space is, how little there is to see. There are only a few photos on the walls — she can spot Fleur smiling and waving in a few of them, the rest of the blond-haired Delacour's in others — and the furniture is sparse throughout. It seems less like a home and more like a prison cell. Their mugs sit forgotten on the coffee table and the logs in the hearth have cooled to bits of ash. 

The sun feels good against her skin as she steps outside. Her bare feet sink into the sand when she walks. The waves are choppy today, poked and prodded along by the afternoon breeze. A single sailboat coasts along the horizon. Far, far away, a white speck against two halves of blue. Sandpipers chase the tide, racing by the rocks at the base of the cliff face before running back again. 

“Please.”

She turns around. Fleur stands in the open doorway, a robe wrapped tightly around herself, and her hair billows gently in the wind. She, too, seems changed in the light. Fleur looks older, somehow, more than she should be. Like she’d lived and suffered and loved through a thousand different lifetimes. She’s still slight, still graceful, but there’s a particular weight to her shoulders, now. A tiredness that seems to have settled in her very bones. Her eyes cast that same, poignant shadow that makes Hermione’s heart clench in her chest. _How many times_ , her gaze seems to say, _how many times will you destroy me._

“I’m sorry,” She says, and then she’s gone. 

* * *

Ron is there when she comes home. 

He’s standing in the kitchen, surrounded by her monument of glass, and he rushes towards her the second she rounds the corner. 

“‘Mione,” He breathes into her hair, wrapping his arms so tightly around her that she wonders if he’ll ever let her go, “I was so _worried_ about you.”

“I came home this morning and there was glass everywhere and I thought — ” He blubbers. His tears are wet against her neck. Hermione feels nothing at all. Vacant. Like she’d left the important pieces of herself behind, “I thought something happened to you. I’m so sorry, ‘Mione. I shouldn’t have left like that. It was wrong of me.” 

Ron pulls away to look at her, and Hermione realizes then that she’s barefoot and in the previous night’s clothes. Did she smell like sex (lilac and honeysuckle)? Like guilt or shame (silver-blond hair between her fingers)? Could he see it shining in her eyes (a kiss pressed below her ear)? He brushes a hand against her face and the touch feels like death. Like lies. 

“Ron —”

“Whatever is happening to us, I want to work through it.” He interrupts. Perhaps he knew what she was going to say, that they were a crumbling sham of a marriage that needed to be put out of its misery. There’s a conviction in his voice, a fiery determination. A dedication, a passionate stubbornness. Maybe, if she loved him enough, the display would make her heart swell with joy. But Hermione feels nothing and nothing at all, “I love you, Hermione. More than anything.” 

He kisses her, and she wonders if she tastes like someone else. His face is too rough against her, too harsh from stubble. The hands on her waist are too tight. Too large and clumsy when they should be delicate and slender. She lets him press against her all the same. Hermione touches him, too, and it makes that aching guilt in her chest ease for just a little while. She lets him lead her up the stairs of their home, into the bedroom where she’s slept for the past two years of her life. Only it isn’t really hers. It’s another lie, another parody of love and normalcy to keep them entertained. But it doesn’t matter. Not now. 

(She imagines smooth, long legs, deep blue eyes, and alabaster skin). 

It’s over almost as soon as it starts. She supposes she ought to be grateful, but she isn’t. She’s just...sad, more than anything else. Ron wraps around her, pressing her close to his chest, and Hermione wishes with everything that she has that she could love him. But she can’t. 

“Ron,” She tries again, but he’s already drifted off to sleep.


	4. The Thing with Feathers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Apologies for the longer than usual wait between chapters. It's midterm season at my university, but things are finally winding down! Thank you all again for the support! 
> 
> Comments and criticisms are more than welcome!
> 
> A.R. Chase

_My Dearest Grandmother_ , Fleur writes at the kitchen table. The ocean is smooth and calm beyond her window, _I fear that I have made a mess of things_. 

She supposes the last part is somewhat of a lie. Her life has long been a disaster. That knowledge is definitive, absolute — and she doesn’t fear it at all. But her family knows none of it. None of her pain, none of her sorrow. They don’t know that she’s trapped — that she’sb _been_ trapped for over a decade. To them, her desolation is only temporary. She is simply a tired war hero slumbering by the coast. A lost girl wandering her way through thought until she finds the path back to normalcy. She’s caught in a temporary state of melancholy, a fleeting instance of self-imposed isolation that will surely end with time. To them, her troubles are understandable. Expected. Who wouldn’t be adrift, given what she’s seen? What she’s had to give up?

So they let her be, alone and shivering by the sea. 

This is all by her own careful design, of course. Fleur is an excellent actress. She had to be one growing up — the perfect picture of grace and propriety and composure — and she’s fooled them all for years. 

“It’s only my nerves, papa,” Fleur had said to him when she visited Cassis a few summers ago. Gabrielle fretted over her, asking too many questions, and her mother eyed her suspiciously from the kitchen. Her father looked at her like she was some small, pitiful thing, and she never wanted to come back home ever again, “I just need time.” 

(They know she’s not happy. That much she cannot hide. But they don’t know that she weeps sometimes, and that’s enough for her). 

It _was_ enough, she should say. Fleur made her peace with her fate. She had to. What would her parents think, after all, if they knew — if they saw even an ounce of the real turmoil that had plagued her for so long. Her failures, her inadequacies. Her miscalculations. So she grieved in private for the things she’d lost and the things she’d never have. For the dead, for the living. For those like her, who weren’t quite one or the other, but stuck in between. She was content with hiding, with lying to her family if it meant to spare them from pain. From disappointment, from the truth. It was easier that way. 

But that crafted reality is not sufficient anymore, not now as she sits by the window. She can’t pick out where it is, exactly, that things have changed. The place where her exile is no longer viable, the place where the scales have tipped out of balance. Where the last puzzle piece slid out of place. She just woke up one of those lonely days (her soul alight with longing) and the walls of her prison drew a little tighter, a little nearer, and she felt like she’d burst out of her skin if she pretended any longer.

(Fleur supposes that’s another lie. She can distinguish the possibilities. But which moment was it? Was it Hermione, cold and shivering and dazed on her doorstep? Her eyes dark and glistening in the firelight? Wrapped in her arms, coiled in the bedsheets? Or was it the sight of her back under the sunlight? She knows _that_ image well — the slope so delicate and beautiful, her shoulders so small and delicate — as she’d watched Hermione leave her plenty of times before). 

Perhaps that’s why she felt so compelled to help the English Veela clans. Fleur knew what it was like to have her back pressed against the wall, to feel powerless and stripped of control. To be at the complete, utter mercy of another. The British Ministry had long kept the Veela under their jurisdiction on a short leash. Their very existence is harshly patrolled — their ancestral land unwillingly delegated, shrinking smaller and smaller by the year, and Veela have only recently been classified as Beings. Before that they were Beasts to the Ministry, a creature to hunt and harvest and consume. Now they are subjects to rule over, to command and oversee. 

Humans. What terrible creatures. 

But the English Veela were not to be quietly corralled like livestock. They are too proud, too angry, too tired and too enamored with tradition to keel over in the dirt. They wanted complete control over their own affairs. No more outside laws, no more foreign regulation. It made for a precarious situation — a hell-bent Ministry and the unyielding Veela. Both sides are largely unwilling to compromise, unwilling to accept anything other than complete compliance to their own demands. Tensions would bubble over eventually, and Fleur feared for those who would burn. 

The English clans aren’t allies to her own people, not exactly, and there was likely much more worth in spending her time with the French clans that she will one day lead, but who else would advocate for them? Who else would fight for their rights, for their land and the preservation of their culture? It would be an affront to stand by and do nothing. 

So she accepted Kingsley Shacklebolt’s offer. She would serve as a mediator of sorts, straddling the uncomfortable line between human and Veela, and aid in reaching a resolution that is agreeable to both parties. Fleur isn’t sure that such a solution even _exists_ , but she’d try her hardest to find it. 

That’s how she ended up in London yesterday, on a Friday afternoon. She had never before stepped foot into this level of the British Ministry. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was busy, teeming with witches and wizards all bustling about. Fleur felt out of place as Shacklebolt led her through the halls. He was pointing to certain things, certain people, explaining this and that, but Fleur couldn’t quite absorb any of it. She was terribly overwhelmed. 

“Thank you again for joining us, Fleur,” Shacklebolt said to her, “Your help will prove to be invaluable, I’m sure of it.”

Her office was small, barely larger than that of a spandrel closet. It laid at the end of one of the long, narrow corridors, and Fleur was certain nobody had used the space for at least a few years. The walls were completely bare, and there was no furniture save for a single desk, chair, and filing cabinet. There was a healthy stack of documents already waiting for her. The enchanted scenery beyond the single window was pleasant, reflecting a warm and idyllic French countryside. She could see vineyards stretched far to the glass horizon, with quaint, little white cottages sparsed throughout. 

(Oh, how she missed her home. She’d gone back a few times since the war, but it was never the same. The water wasn’t quite as blue as Fleur remembered. The trees didn’t seem as tall and the roses didn’t smell quite as sweet. She supposed the home that she missed — the home from her childhood, when she was a girl, still naive and innocent and happy — doesn’t exist, not anymore. That place had crumbled with time. With war, with death. It was only a memory, now, a hazy recollection of what was and what will never be. The sight made her deeply sad). 

“You’ll have the weekend to go through those,” The Minister nodded to the folders on her desk. Fleur snapped back to reality, forcing her eyes away from the window, “And you’ll start formally on Monday. Gethsemane Prickle is the Head of your department, so you’ll be deferring to her on most things.”

“Any questions?” 

She had missed the entirety of whatever speech he had given her, and Fleur had absolutely no clue what was expected of her. It was going to be a long, long weekend. 

“No, no questions.” She chirped with a smile. (Fleur is an excellent actress).

“Good. Ah, and, before I forget —” 

“Minister? You’ve requested my presence?”

Hermione appeared suddenly in the open doorway, then, and Fleur’s breath all but left her body when their eyes met. Her heart throbbed painfully in her chest. Hermione gaped at her from across the room, just as shocked as Fleur. She felt like the world had just frozen, somehow, as nothing seemed to move. 

“Hermione! Wonderful timing!” Shacklebolt exclaimed. If he noticed the sudden tension in the room, he didn’t make a show of it. His face remained as calm and impassive as ever, “You two will be working together closely on the matter of Veela negotiations. I doubt that introductions are to be in order?” 

How could she have forgotten. Hermione worked for the Ministry in the very same department, she had told her so just weeks ago in the middle of the night. She was one of the Ministry’s best. Of _course_ she would work on a case as delicate as this one. Another oversight, another miscalculation. And now she’d pay the price. 

“But, sir, my work with the house elves —”

“Will promptly resume after the Veela are placated,” The Minister said gently, “After all, one would say things are a bit more...pressing with the Veela, yes?”

He meant the simmering threat of an all-out war. Fleur watched as Hermione dug her nails into the flesh of her palms. Had she expected to never see her again? 

“Now that you’re, here, Hermione, there is something I wished to discuss with you…” 

_A terrible, awful mess,_ She writes to her grandmother, _and I’m not sure what to do._

Fleur knows the smart thing to do. She should resign, effectively immediately with the most profuse of apologies, and trail after Bill. There she could find a small house, maybe, somewhere nice and quaint and near her best friend. She could find a new job there. Teaching, perhaps. She was always good with charms. Or, if she felt particularly unhinged, she’d crawl back home and wallow in her childhood bedroom, as pathetic as it sounds. Anything and anywhere that would get her away from here, away from this job

(But she can’t. It has nothing to do with being right or wrong, smart or dim-witted, but everything to do with the simple fact that she cannot bear to leave this place. Her heart would surely stop if she strayed too far from Hermione, too far from the hope that _maybe someday_. It was a feathered, foolish hope, but it perched in her soul nonetheless). 

(Because Fleur knew that Hermione would always come back. She always did. Whether it took days or months or years, Hermione always came back. And Fleur always waits for her). 

She’d cried for days after Hermione came and left — for weeks, really, after Hermione left her broken and used in the sand. Unwanted, tossed away like garbage. Fleur sat in the parlor for a long time that day. Not moving, not blinking, her mind as empty as her home. She scarcely even breathed. The light from the windows grew and stretched and elongated, turning from white to yellow to dusky orange, and Fleur remained the same. 

It was dark when she could move again. She climbed up to that spot on the ridge, the one that Bill had shown her long ago. Her joints protested more than usual. Like the sinew beneath her skin had turned to dust. The soles of her feet were raw when she reached the top, and her hands were cold and blistered. The moon was missing from the sky that night. In its cyclic absence, the stars glittered like millions of unshed tears. 

How lonely it must be, Fleur thought, to be a star. 

The aching void in her chest, the one that had scarred around the edges, nearing closer and closer to some semblance of healing, had torn open and bled again. But Fleur was used to that too, that cycle of grieving and healing and bleeding and dying all over again. How could she not be, with a love like hers. 

The lighthouse across the bay stared at her with a single, blank, unblinking eye, and, for the first time, Fleur didn’t feel any less alone. 

* * *

“Checkmate!” Bill laughed as he beat her at yet _another_ game of Wizard’s Chess. His bishop dragged Fleur’s white King from the chessboard, the latter violently kicking and thrashing about, “You’re rubbish at this, you know.”

“One more game.” Fleur just about growled. They had been playing all day from the early morning till the late afternoon. It was a weekend, a bright and sunny one, and Bill pulled out his infernal chess set for what was to be peaceful and relaxing fun. What followed was a series of quick, brutal defeats, and Fleur grew more and more irate with the stupid thing — much to Bill’s amusement. There were too many threads to keep track of — a rook here, a knight there, a pawn creeping nearer and nearer — and Fleur found herself losing sight of them all. 

“All right, all right,” He grinned. The chessmen began to reassemble themselves with a wave of his hand, “I’ll try not to go so hard on you this time.” 

“I’ll make you eat those words, Weasley.” 

Only she hadn’t, and she was instead losing rather terribly. 

But it didn’t matter. She didn’t care about winning, not really. Neither of them did. _This_ was what mattered, the talking and laughing and smiling. Bill’s eyes alight with mischief, and hers with good-hearted competition. It was easy to get swept up in the waves at Shell Cottage, after all. Easy to become like the house — cold and drafty and lonely in the sand. They were both susceptible to it. The creeping dread. The heavy, omnipresent thing that crawled from the sea and wrapped itself around them so tight that they almost couldn’t breathe. Days like this, when they laughed and played in spite of it all, kept that melancholy away. 

So it didn’t matter that her pawn was taken, or that she forgot which ways a rook could move or what castling was. Not really. 

A knock at the door shook Fleur from thought. Bill looked up as his pawn pummeled hers, his brows raised in surprise, “Expecting a hot date?” 

They never got visitors. Shell Cottage was too small for much company. But there was Harry. He visited once a month — or he tried too, anyway, life occasionally got in the way — and brought Dobby fresh flowers. Socks, sometimes, but Fleur didn’t understand why. He always came in for a bit after sitting by the headstone. It was nice to have him over. He was a good friend to her, he always had been, and she enjoyed hearing about his life. Ginny never came with him, though. Fleur understood why. 

“Shut up,” She huffed, and flicked him on the shoulder as she passed into the hallway, “And no cheating, William! I’ll know if you do.” 

(She wouldn’t). 

Only it wasn’t Harry on her doorstep. It was Hermione, dressed just as smart as always, and Fleur smiled. This kept the loneliness away, too. 

(Hermione came over often. But not to visit. Not with Bill, at least. With Fleur. Alone, upstairs in her bedroom while Bill was out. And they did more than just talk about their lives. They’d made up after the war — or something close to making up. Hermione was still with Ron. That hadn’t changed. Well, she was with him, but she wasn’t really _with_ him. Not the way that she was with Fleur. It still made Fleur sick to think about it, but she was not one to be easily dissuaded. It was the Veela in her, she thought, the irascible, stubborn part of her that refused to give up. The thing in her with feathers).

“Hermione!” She wanted to kiss her, to take her into her arms. But Bill was in the parlor, visible just over her shoulder, and Fleur could hardly contain herself. 

He didn’t know. Fleur never told him. She talked about a faceless, nameless girl, and Bill had long ago given up asking for any concrete details. How could she tell him? Hermione was with Ron, after all, his baby brother. He would hate her if he knew. They all would. 

(Fleur hated sharing. She hated when Hermione smelled like him, when she had marks on her neck that most certainly did not come from her. Fleur hated to think about Ron’s lips anywhere near her. She hated when Hermione had to leave, to go back to pretending to be something she wasn’t. She hated that Hermione wasn’t really hers. In a perfect world, Fleur wouldn’t have to share. She wouldn’t have to hurt. But the world wasn’t perfect, not even close, and Fleur would bleed until she had bled enough). 

“Hi, Fleur,” Hermione said. But there was something off about her eyes, something strange about the way she didn’t quite look at Fleur, “Bill.”

“‘Mione! I don’t suppose you’ve come for a game?” He called, lifting one of Fleur’s captured knights above his head. 

“No, I haven’t,” She smiled, but it wasn’t really genuine, “That game is far too barbaric for my tastes. I’ve stopped by for just a moment. I need to speak with Fleur.”

They weren’t supposed to meet that day. Hermione only came when Bill was gone for work — she was very particular about that. So what was she there for? Fleur felt afraid, suddenly, as she led Hermione up the stairs to her bedroom. Bill eyed her curiously from his spot on the couch. It must look odd, she figured. He had never known the two to be anything other than acquaintances. Allies during the war. Schoolmates, once, a long time ago. Yet there they were, scurrying upstairs like they were old friends. Fleur hoped that, for once, Bill didn’t know her well enough to put the pieces together. 

She shut the door behind them. Then she locked it, just to be safe. 

Hermione didn’t relax. Instead she stood stiff as a board near the foot of the bed and she did not let go of her purse. She clutched it desperately like it was her lifeline, something tethering her to the ground. Her lip was caught between her teeth, worrying over it again and again. Fleur had seen her this way only a few times. None of them were very pleasant memories. 

She could feel it. The creeping dread. Crawling from the ocean, shambling into her home and up the stairs. It slipped under the door, silent as a mouse, and slithered up her spine. Fleur could feel it soak into her skin, permeating through her veins and settling deep in her bones. She felt cold. Deathly. Like she was a corpse, frozen in the ground. 

Fleur moved to her, her arms outstretched to comfort her, but Hermione shied away. The creeping dread tightened around her neck and her throat felt very, very dry. 

“Hermione? What’s —”

“I’m marrying him,” Hermione blurted, her knuckles going white, “I’m marrying Ron and this has to stop.”

Oh. 

Fleur blinked. She could hear Bill mousing around downstairs in the kitchen, likely trying to catch a bit of their conversation, and she felt incredibly faint. Like she was going to dissolve. She blinked again, but nothing changed. 

“What?” Was that her voice, or was it someone else’s? 

“Ron and I are getting married.” Hermione repeated, but Fleur heard her the first time. It didn’t seem any more real, though, not any more fathomable, “And I can’t do this anymore. It...it isn’t right.” 

This. The sneaking around. The lying. The nights in this room (lips, teeth, tongue), the whispers in the dark. The perilous dance they’d done around each other for years. Fleur breathed in sharply through her nose. Surely she was dreaming. Surely she heard wrong. 

(This wasn’t supposed to happen. Fleur had hoped that, maybe, if she bled and sacrificed and waited enough, Hermione would choose her in the end. Foolish, maybe, but what else was she to do? She didn’t have a choice. She never did. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen).

“You’re...you’re marrying him?” 

“Yes. You’re more than welcome to come to the ceremony, you and Bill both.”

“But you can’t marry him.” 

“I can,” Hermione said. There was a certain hardness to her voice, despite her trembling hands. Something that reminded Fleur of stone, unbreakable. Unyielding, “And I will.”

(Fleur remembered the last time Hermione came to her, just a little over a month ago. It felt final, somehow, even then. Hermione seemed to savor her for too long, her hands lingering, trailing, memorizing long after they’d finished. Fleur remembered watching her lay on her back. The window was open, the full moon hanging ripe above the sea, and Hermione stared up at the ceiling. Her eyes were far away, her thoughts running deeper than Fleur could reach. Was she saying goodbye? Was she grieving?).

“So that’s it? After everything we’ve done. Everything we’ve been through. It’s over, just like that?” 

The shock was fading, and anger quickly burned in its place. Fleur felt the Veela rearing in her blood, screeching and indignant. Of course Hermione would do this, of course she’d run away. She was a fool to expect anything different. That was what made Fleur the most upset — the fact that she had been stupid enough to dance the same dance and sing the same song for _years_ of her life and still had the nerve to hope for a different outcome. 

“Fleur, please don’t make this harder than it has to be.” Hermione pleaded. Her strength had begun to crack, then, wavering around the edges. Is that how a stone breaks? Splintering, crumbling under pressure, then bursting all at once? 

“Me? Making things harder for _you_? That’s fucking rich, Hermione.”

Something flashed across her face. Hurt. maybe, or guilt. Shock, like Fleur had struck her. Fleur felt a flicker of regret, and the more human, more sensible part of herself knew that she was tumbling down a steep hill. That she was well on her way to saying something she would truly regret. But the wilder part of her didn’t care. She was losing everything. That faint glimmer of hope, the possibility that _maybe someday_ , was dying right in front of her. 

Bill coughed from downstairs. Fleur realized that she had spoken a touch lighter than she intended to, but, again, she didn’t really care. 

“Keep your voice down.” Hermione gritted her teeth and schooled her features. Gone was the flicker of vulnerability. She was rock-like again, cold and unflappable, and Fleur wanted to scream.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Fine, be petulant if you want. It won’t change anything.”

The walls were closing in. This was it. The end of the road. She’d experienced this sort of thing with Hermione before — the dashed hopes, the denial, the rejection — but never something so final as _marriage_. She was out of time. Out of faith. 

“So you’ve decided then. There’s nothing I can say to change your mind.” She was wondering aloud more than asking an outright question, but Hermione nodded all the same. 

“No,” She said, “I’m afraid not.”

They stood in silence for a moment. Shell Cottage held its breath with them and all of the world became still. Even the waves outside were motionless. It was so terribly, deafeningly quiet that Fleur thought she could hear her heart breaking. 

“Fleur,” Hermione said, edging closer ever so carefully like Fleur was a delicate thing that could shatter at the slightest of moves. She looked apologetic, almost, “What happened between us...it was a mistake.”

A mistake. She’d heard that one before. Enough times that she dreamt of Hermione saying it. A mistake. Is that what this was? Every hour, every kiss? Every sacrifice she’d made. Every opportunity she’d passed, every second of her life spent waiting. A mistake. She licked her lips, and she wasn’t surprised to taste tears. They were bitter on her tongue. A _mistake_. 

(It hurt her more than anything ever could). 

“Do you love him?” Fleur had to know. She couldn’t walk away without knowing. It would kill her. 

“What?” Hermione cleared her throat. Her eyes were glistening. 

“Do you love him.” 

“Of course I do.” She nodded, frowning, but Fleur knew when she was lying. When she was running away from things. She’d seen that look a thousand times. 

“You can’t even say it.” 

“Because it doesn’t _matter_!” She shouted. Fleur winced at the outburst. Hermione was crying now, freely so, and the tears slipped down her face like drops of rain. Fleur wished she could catch them all. She wished that neither of them would ever have to feel this pain again, “Why can’t you just let me go?”

(Fleur asked herself the same question. Over and over and over. But it was useless. She knew the answer. She had always known. It was etched into her very soul. The answer was waiting for her before she was even born. It was her destiny, her absolute. The greatest truth. There was no running from it, no denying it. No putting it in a box on a shelf and moving on with life. There was no pretending, no hiding. She couldn’t let go). 

She couldn’t. She never could. She never would. 

“Because I love you.” There she went, tumbling down that steep hill. Fleur knew she would regret it. But this was it — her last chance. She had to make it count, “I’ve loved you my entire life.”

“No,” Hermione shook her head, backing away, “No. You don’t.”

“I do,” She had never said anything more strongly. More firmly. She had been waiting to say it for years, “I can say it even if you can’t.”

(She had said it once. A long time ago, during the war. In this very house. But Hermione didn’t hear. She was asleep, broken and crumbled in the guest bedroom, her skin bloody and torn. Fleur dreamt about that, too. Seeing Hermione after what happened at that place. Trying to heal what had been done, to take away the hurt. But she had never looked so small. Fleur knew then that Hermione would never be the same. That her innocence to the world had been taken. Stolen).

“Fleur. You —”

“Don’t you understand? Can’t you see that I don’t have a choice?” She was bordering dangerously on the truth. The thing that she’d held back for so long. Fleur didn’t want to say it. She hoped that Hermione would understand, that she’d puzzle the pieces together and fill in the blanks. It would make things easier that way. 

But Hermione didn’t understand. Or, maybe she did, and she didn’t want to accept it.

So Fleur surged forward.

Hermione didn’t cower. She let Fleur gather her hands in her own and press them over her chest. Fleur felt her own heart beating against the touch — still broken, but beating — and she prayed to who or whatever might be listening that this was the right choice. She looked into Hermione’s eyes, those pools of chocolate that she loved so terribly, and, for the first time in all of her life, Fleur said it aloud. 

“I don’t have a choice,” Her voice was softer than before, more measured, and Hermione’s lips quivered, “You could kill me and I would still love you.”

“You could drive a dagger through my heart,” She said, pressing her hand closer, “And I’d _still_ love you. Hermione, you’re...you’re my bondmate.” 

There it was. Out in the open. Maybe not as eloquent as she’d hoped, but it was true. Her words, suspended in the air. She wasn’t sure if Hermione even knew what a bondmate was, but she felt better regardless. A great relief coursed through her, like she had carried a tremendous weight for all her life, and she was finally free of it. She’d never told anyone. Not her parents, not Gabrielle, not Bill. Not even her grandmother. 

She’d known since she was sixteen years old in Dijon, when she’d seen Hermione pass by. They were both just girls then, but Fleur knew anyway. It was just as the stories had described. Something in the air changed when they locked eyes for those few brief moments. Like the center of gravity had shifted. Her life became divided into two parts: before she saw Hermione, and after she saw Hermione. The before seemed bleak, somehow, like the sun had been swallowed whole, and the after was impossibly warm and bright. But then Hermione was gone, and all Fleur could do was hope to see her again. 

(And she did). 

An unreadable array of expressions washed over Hermione’s face, then. What were they? Fleur didn’t have enough time to tell before Hermione kissed her hard enough to bruise. It was wet, desperate, and Fleur pressed back. She kissed her like she might never do it again. Hermione cupped her face and Fleur grabbed onto her waist. They were so close together that Fleur wasn’t sure where Hermione ended and she began. For a single, wonderful, glorious moment, they were one. 

But it didn’t last. Nothing did. That’s the price of things, Fleur thought, knowing that you’d lose them. 

“I’m sorry, Fleur,” Hermione sobbed when they broke apart, “I’m so, so sorry.”

And then she left. Fleur let her go when she pulled away and hurried down the stairs. She didn’t chase after her. There was no point. She’d said her piece. She was too drained to cry, too shattered to scream or wail or do anything other than crawl in bed and stare at the wall and think of nothing. This is what she got. After suffering. After sacrifice. After having enough love in her heart to outshine the brightest star. _This_ is what she got. 

This is what death is like, she thought. 

That’s where Bill found her some hours later. In her room. The sun had set in the sky. He cracked the door open, gently, and called her name so softly that she almost didn’t hear it. Fleur didn’t move. She didn’t even look at him. She just laid there, in the bed that would surely become her grave, and listened to him breathe. 

The bed dipped when he sat beside her. For a moment, he said nothing. 

“Come with me,” Bill whispered, “There’s a place I want to show you.”

* * *

A sharp bite along her fingers makes Fleur drop her quill. 

Patches, another _wonderful_ gift from Bill before he’d left for Brazil, stares up at her with wide black eyes. He’s a barn owl, rather small for his kind, and he’s absolutely the most annoying bird Fleur has ever met. He pecks at her again. 

“ _Ow_ , you damned thing,” She hisses and snatches her hand away. A bit of blood wells up around her cuticles, and she brings the wound up to her mouth. Patches turns his head. He wants to go outside. He always does, around this time, when the sun is just beginning to set over the water, “You know you shouldn’t be on the table.” 

Her unfinished letter gazes at her with an accusatory heat. She feels guilty for not writing as much as she should to her grandmother. She feels even more guilty for breaking her silence only to reach out for advice. But that was just about the only person she couldn’t lie to. Her grandmother could see right through any act, she always could, and Fleur was reluctant to worry her. 

Patches makes a soft trilling noise and bobs his head. 

“All right,” She says, standing to her feet and offering an arm, “You’ve convinced me.” 

Fleur tends to her garden while Patches flies overhead. He’s not hunting, not now, but gliding up and around the orange sky. She supposes that he’s enjoying the view. The waves are lazy this evening, and they whisper softly to her from across the beach. Seaspray and remnants of glittering foam trail all along the shoreline. The sun is a low-hanging orb of fire in the distance, colored a sleepy, dusky amber, and the heat feels pleasant on her skin. 

Shell Cottage is a lonely place, but it’s awfully beautiful, too. 

The air smells sweet like her roses. She grows them in planter beds near the cottage. They are stubborn, temperamental creatures that detest the sea, but she rears them anyway. She’s always had a bit of a green thumb, after all, and they are lovely things to look at. They remind her of home. Her mother always kept them in the gardens. The rose bushes always seemed so magical when she was a girl, running through the hedges barefoot like she was in a fairytale. 

(They remind her of a night she had years ago. At Hogwarts, on Christmas Eve, tucked up in an old, empty room. The memory brings a smile to her lips). 

Something changes in the wind. Fleur knows that she’s there before she even says a word. 

“Fleur,” 

She turns around. Hermione stands at the beginning of her garden, just a few paces away, a sheepish but determined look on her face. She looks beautiful in the setting sun, so beautiful that the roses look like weeds and Shell Cottage becomes nothing more than a dilapidated shack. Fleur doesn’t move. She doesn't trust herself to inch any closer. 

“Hermione.” She says back.

“Listen,” Hermione starts, her fingers worrying themselves into knots, “I know we have our...past, but I take my job very seriously. If the Minister thinks that we should work together on this case, then we will. We certainly don’t have to be friends, but I won’t have our differences getting in the way of things. Not when so much is at stake.” 

“I —”

“Because I truly believe that the Veela clans deserve to be treated far better, and this is an amazing opportunity for progress that I wouldn’t dream of ruining. So I only ask that we set our history aside for now, and focus on the —”

“ _Hermione_ ,” Fleur interrupts again, “I agree with you.” 

And she did, partly. There was no getting out of this. It wouldn’t be right. So what else was she to do but try her best to not fall apart? Fleur was an excellent actress. She could play the part for a little while. She owed that much to the Veela, that much to herself. 

“Oh,” Hermoine says, and takes a relieved gulp of air, “So, coworkers?” 

“Coworkers.” She repeats, but that creeping dread ghosts along her spine. 


End file.
